As expected, New York-based Strategy PR Consulting founder and president Cynthia Swartz has added an L.A publicist to her new company. Emily Lu, who made her mark at Brigade Marketing, will join Strategy as National Publicity Director. Swartz and her NY VPs Michael Kupferberg and Elena Zilberman need all the help they can get with their burgeoning roster of clients, many of them potential Oscar contenders. They’ve also added Lindsay Stevens as NY publicity manager.

Indie-minded Strategy has just added an Oscar campaign for Joseph-Gordon Levitt 50/50 (Summit) to their roster. Swartz will continue to push producer Scott Rudin’s mighty trio Moneyball, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Strategy also reps Rampart, Oren Moverman’s follow-up to The Messenger, which was picked up by Nu Image’s Millennium Entertainment. While Nu Image owner Avi Lerner tends to control spending on theatrical runs headed for DVD, he recognizes the value of an Oscar campaign; Millennium marketing execs Brooke Ford (Paramount Classics) and Andy Gruenberg are running the campaign. Millennium recently acquired Richard Linklater’s Bernie. Woody Harrelson will work hard for best actor, which counts for a lot, and SAG actors should respond to the ensemble including Sigourney Weaver, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Steve Buscemi, and Ben Foster.

Lu started out working with publicist Carol Marshall before joining Swartz at 42West, where she repped Moverman’s The Messenger before joining Brigade. There Lu worked on film release and/or festival titles such as Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture, David Robert Mitchell’s The Myth of the American Sleepover, Tom Six’s The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence), Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Evan Glodell’s Bellflower, and Lynn Shelton’s Your Sister’s Sister.

Stevens started out at 42West and moved on to ID-PR. She worked on film release and/or awards campaigns for James Wan’s Insidious, Drake Doremus’ Douchebag, Peter Weir’s The Way Back, Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love, Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip, and Doug Liman’s Fair Game.